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The problem with oncall teams that are different to the usual SRE/DevOps teams are the lack of understanding of the system. This can obviously be fixed with good documentation, but in reality, no one has good enough docs. The second problem is actually building that team with the skill needed. Someone with the skill to fix complex systems is not going to want to stick around as 1st line on call support.

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Most places at some scale have some meaningfully defined escalation path. That way you staff people with varying understanding of the system(s).

> This can obviously be fixed with good documentation, but in reality, no one has good enough docs.

One problem I've witnessed related to documentation about on-call issues is the over reliance on the SOP concept. They only commit to one level or one pass of analyzing the issue. They do not future drill down, either by linking to other notes or reviewing the issues deliberately. It's like they read about the 5 Whys and decided why not just 1 why.

yeah thats true, there must be some kind of middle ground between an ops team like that and the can't go to the bathroom without your phone oncall we have though.

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